TV, Internet subscribers dissatisfied, survey finds

Tuesday

May 20, 2014 at 12:01 AMMay 20, 2014 at 5:42 AM

Only days after AT&T announced plans to buy DirecTV and a few months after Comcast announced plans to buy Time Warner Cable, a new survey shows that satisfaction with those and other players in the pay-TV and Internet business has hit a new low.

Tim Feran, The Columbus Dispatch

Only days after AT&T announced plans to buy DirecTV and a few months after Comcast announced plans to buy Time Warner Cable, a new survey shows that satisfaction with those and other players in the pay-TV and Internet business has hit a new low.

“It’s really a combination of reliability — dropped calls, poor picture, slow Internet speed — and incredible prices,” said David VanAmburg, managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which was released this morning. “We consumers feel we pay tons of money for our household service, and we’re not getting very good quality for it.”

According to the annual report on the telecommunications and information sector, satisfaction with subscription-TV providers fell 4 points, to 65, on a 100-point scale, while Internet providers dropped 3 points, to a score of 63. The survey was taken between Jan. 13 and March 11.

The dismal ratings are “more of the same,” said telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan. “The same results we have seen year after year after year.”

Officials at Time Warner and AT&T said they had not seen the survey and could not comment on its findings.

However, AT&T officials said that U-verse’s Internet-based technology has many advantages over older, cable-based technologies, which has led to their service being “one of the most honored TV products for service innovation in the industry.”

Customer satisfaction is deteriorating for all of the largest pay-TV providers, the survey said, but viewers are much more dissatisfied with cable TV services such as Comcast and Time Warner than fiber-optic and satellite services such as DirecTV and AT&T U-verse.

Cable giants Comcast and Time Warner Cable have the most dissatisfied customers. Comcast fell to a 60 rating, while Time Warner registered the biggest loss and plunged to 56, its lowest score to date. Charter Communications was near Comcast and Time Warner, with a 60 ranking.

The ranking of Charter Communications is significant because Time Warner Cable customers in central Ohio and the rest of the state would become Charter customers under a three-way deal announced in April to help Comcast win regulatory approval for its proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable.

The three big companies languished at the bottom of the rankings for Internet service, too.

Customers ranked Comcast, at a 57 rating, and Time Warner Cable, at a 54 rating, even lower for Internet service than for their TV service. Charter had a 61, just above its TV score.

Satisfaction ratings have rarely been above 70 for any of the companies on the list, and they’re unlikely to improve if the two multibillion-dollar deals go through, VanAmburg said.

“Generally speaking, the reason why is, over 20 years of data, we have found a very strong relationship between the level of competition and how satisfied customers are with products and services.

“In short, the more competitive the landscape is, the more satisfied customers are, across the board,” VanAmburg said. “Where you have that lack of competition, there is literally no incentive to delight customers. They know we need their service, so there is no incentive to improve.”